ASET Technology Alberta Spring 2021 - 14

Autonomous driving platforms and data-informed seeding paths can increase yield efficiency and optimize fertilizer and water usage.
Image courtesy of Calgary Economic Development.

" [Dot's] an autonomous tractor, " says Rav Singh, an instructor
with the college's agricultural technology programming faculty. " What it does, is basically just goes out in the field and
does exactly what a tractor is supposed to do: carry different implements, carry out seeding, carry out air seeding and
spraying, all autonomously. So no driver. "
Singh says that along with the benefits the Smart Farm brings,
another edge the college provides comes from the real-world
results occurring at the end of a semester.
One of the programs Singh teaches is agritech integration, or
ATI. It's made up of two terms, the first of which has students
learning about agricultural technology functions. The second
term is focused on automation and robotics in agriculture.
" We've chosen students to work collaboratively with each
other and our instructors and instructional assistants to develop a blueprint of a machine that is currently required in the
marketplace, " Singh says. " So a real world challenge that that
machine is going to solve is around climate change. "
He points to a demand for solutions around spreading livestock manure for the purposes of both fertilization and cutting carbon emissions, as one such project for the program.
" There are manure spreaders that exist already. But we're
taking it up a notch, " he says.
" We're asking students to design a manure spreader that
works alongside GPS technologies to alter the manure
spreading rate on the fly automatically, based on informa-

14 | SPRING 2021 | TECHNOLOGY ALBERTA

tion it feeds to the cloud, meaning their GPS location, and
information that gets back from the cloud, meaning the
pre-decided feed rate by agronomists for that specific geographical location. "
With cases like this one, Singh says that " along with a certificate, they [the students] can also put on their resume that,
'We designed something real time which currently exists in
the field, and here are the blueprints for that.' "
As the researchers, students and companies leverage the
Smart Farm and Olds College's practical curriculum to advance agricultural technology, their friends in organizations
like Calgary Economic Development (CED) help the college
take the results of their research into the next phase.

" We have a memorandum of
understanding with Olds College to
help scale and commercialize tech
that's being developed within our city,
or that we're hearing about, to really
trial it and then work to commercialize
that, " says Lindsay Smylie, CED's
business development manager,
agribusiness. At CED, Smylie says
she and her team have noticed an
outgrowth of an entirely different
type of farming as well.

ASET Technology Alberta Spring 2021

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